Niquelle LaTouche Artists statement -Summer term

My work this term explores the transitory nature of dance and its relation to contemporary art through the illumination of the positive impacts that mechanical intervention can have on the perceptions of ordinary structures that exist in our everyday living. This project will highlight and elongate temporal structures that exist within a single moment through its investigation into the kinetic and processed based works. Through digital documentation and manipulation, I aim to expose the beauty of ‘the process’ as the final attributed piece by extending and focusing upon the fragility of human memory being used the element needed to continue a single moment. I will expose the temporary fundamentals which most exhibited pieces are founded upon and show that its presence in time and space is a unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This existence can be enriched by mechanical intervention.

Using a mixed media approach my “Still Life” (video animation/installation) and “Emptied Gestures” (performance/light installation) pieces will unveil the smokescreen of hierarchised art and gain appreciation of the naturally occurring ‘happenings’ and visual stimuli of daily routine. Van Gelder’s meat portraits explore the limitations of genre and I will too question ‘what is a still life?’ ‘What must an installation conform to?’

Through my research on Tino Sehgal’s ‘constructed happenings’ I realised the delicacy of the human memory through performance. My performance will convey, initial stimuli Heather Hansen’s “emptying [of] gestures from one form to another”. My work initially developed to be drawing from movement alone which raised questions of aesthetics, but it was not the process of “downloading movement” but the elongation of a temporary moment that my intentions are focalised. After attending the Interactive Sculpture workshops and researching BBKP I began collaborating Systems Engineering to explore the temporary nature of performance and found developed technologies that can elongate that moment in time. I will “download” the spontaneity of freestyle dance, using digital LED reinforcement. The fragility of the immateriality of performance artists such as Sehgal, encapsulate a pureness of the moment, my works will extend that purity through the mechanical means of reproduction.

Maria Zahle’s doubling of architectural structures, brings our attention to the existence of the intricacies of the space and ordinary items. The projected moving images of “Still life”embrace Kentridge’s thematic exploration of animation and its exempt drawing classification and question the limitations of conforming to traditional still life paintings or drawings, I found captured one moment of the drawing process. I will show the changes of a drawing as the exhibited piece and demonstrate how digital manipulation can help illuminate the beauty of that practice. The installation, through the power of the aesthetic of a natural space (the kitchen sink) will reinforce ideas of temporality and memory. Domesticated materials have closeness with the body and trigger memory; this potential will bring fourth appreciation and illumination of the naturally existing spaces surrounding us. There is a relationship between the space, the viewer interaction and the works. The work is live and not static like the constraints of the art fair and will extend the moment using time manipulation, colour and form.